Fenwick's Career by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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face, and, with one last look round the room, she crept to the doorand unlocked it. So quietly did she descend the stairs that Mrs.Gibbs, who was listening sharply, with the kitchen door open, for anysound of her departure, heard nothing. The outer door opened and shutwithout the smallest noise, and the slender, veiled figure was quicklylost in the darkness and the traffic of the street.

PART III

AFTER TWELVE YEARS

'Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.'

Thus advised by the wife of the concierge, Fenwick crossed thecourtyard of an old house in the Rue du Bac, looked up a moment at thesober and distinguished charm of its architecture, at the corniced,many-paned windows, so solidly framed and plentifully lined in white,upon the stone walls, and the high roof, with its lucarne windows justtouched with classical decoration; each line and tint contributingto a seemly, restrained whole, as of something much worn by time, yetmerely enhanced thereby, something deliberately built, moreover, tostand the years, and abide the judgement of posterity. The house inSaint-Simon's day had belonged to one of those newly ennobled dukes,his contemporaries and would-be brethren, whose monstrous claims torank with himself and the other real magnificences among the _ducset pairs de France_ drove him to distraction. It was now let out to amultitude of families, who began downstairs in affluence and endedin the genteel or artistic penury of the garrets. The first floor wasoccupied by a deputy and ex-minister, one of the leaders of the CentreGauche--in the garrets it was possible for a _rapin_ to find a bedroomat sixteen francs a month. But it was needful that he should bea seemly _rapin_, orderly and quietly ambitious, like the house,otherwise he would not have been long suffered within its tranquil andself-respecting walls.

Fenwick climbed and climbed, discovered the little wooden staircase,and still climbed. At the very top he found a long and narrowcorridor, along which he groped in darkness. Suddenly, at the end, adoor opened, and a figure appeared on the threshold.

'Fenwick!--that you? All right!--no steps! The floor was left _aunaturel_ about 1680--but you won't come to grief.'

Fenwick arrived at the open door, and Dick Watson drew him into thelarge studio beyond. Fenwick looked round him in astonishment. Theroom was a huge _grenier_ in the roof of the old house, roughlyadapted to the purposes of a studio. A large window to the north hadbeen put in, and the walls had been rudely plastered. But all theblasts of heaven seemed still to blow through them, and through thechinks or under the eaves of the roof; while in the middle of thefloor a pool of water, the remains of a recent heavy shower, testifiedto the ease with which the weather could enter if it chose.

'I say'--said Fenwick, pointing to the water--'can you stand this kindof thing?'

Watson shivered.

'Not in this weather. I'm off next week. In the summer it's pleasantenough. Well, it's deuced lucky I caught sight of you at that showyesterday! How are you? I believe it's nearly two years since we metlast.'

'I'm all right,' said Fenwick, accepting a shaky seat and a cigarette.

Watson lighted a fresh one for himself, and then with arms akimbosurveyed his visitor.

'I've seen you look better. What's the matter? Have you been workingthrough the summer in London?'

'I'm all right,' Fenwick repeated; then, with a little grimace--'orI should be, if I could pay my way, and paint the things I want topaint.'

He looked up.

'Well, why don't you?'

'Because--somehow--one has to live.'

Watson climbed on to his high stool, still observing his visitor.For a good many years now, Fenwick had been always well and carefullydressed--an evident Londoner, accustomed to drawing-rooms andfrequenting expensive tailors. But to-day there was something in histired, dishevelled look, and comparatively shabby coat, which remindedWatson of years long gone by--of a studio in Bernard Street, and abroad-browed, handsome fellow, with queer manners and a North-Countryaccent. As to good looks, Fenwick's face and head were now far finerthan they had been in first youth; Watson's critical eye took note ofit. The hair, touched lightly with grey, had receded slightly on thetemples, and the more ample brow, heavily lined, gave a noblershelter than of old to the still astonishing vivacity of the eyes.The carriage of the head, too, was prouder and more assured. Fenwick,indeed, as far as years went, was, as Watson knew, in the very primeof life. Nevertheless, there was in his aspect, as he sat there, aprophetic note of discouragement, of ebbing vitality which startledhis friend.

'I say,' said Watson, abruptly, 'you've been over-doing it. Have youmade it up with the Academy?'

Fenwick laughed.

'Goodness, no!'

'Where have you been exhibiting this year?'

'At the gallery I always take. And I sent some things to theGrosvenor.'

'I have never regretted it for a single hour--except that the sceneitself was ridiculous.'

Watson knew very well to what he referred. Some two years before,it had been the nine days wonder of artistic London. Fenwick, then anewly elected Associate of the Academy, and at what seemed to be theheight of his first success as an artist, had sent in a picture tothe Spring Exhibition which appeared to the Hanging Committee ofthe moment a perfunctory thing. They gave it a bad place, and anAcademician told Fenwick what had happened. He rushed to BurlingtonHouse, tore down his picture from the wall, stormed at the astonishedmembers of the Hanging Committee, carried off his property, and vowedthat he would resign his Associateship. He was indeed called upon todo so; and he signalised his withdrawal by a furious letter to the_Times_ in which the rancours, grievances, and contempts of tenchequered and ambitious years found full and rhetorical expression.The letter naturally made a breach between the writer and England'sofficial art. Watson, who was abroad when the whole thing happened,had heard of it with mingled feelings. 'It will either make him--orfinish him!' was his own judgement, founded on a fairly exhaustiveknowledge of John Fenwick; and he had waited anxiously for results.So far no details had reached him since. Fenwick seemed to be stillexhibiting, still writing to the papers, and, as far as he knew, stillselling. But the aspect of the man before him was not an aspect ofprosperity.

Watson, however, having started a subject which he well knew to beinterminable, would instantly have liked to escape from it. He washimself nervous, critical, and easily bored. He did not know what heshould do with Fenwick's outpourings when he had listened to them.

But Fenwick had come over--charged--and Watson had touched the spring.He sat there, smoking and declaiming, his eyes blazing, one handplaying with Watson's favourite dog, an Aberdeen terrier who wassoftly smelling and pushing against him. All that litany of mockeryand bitterness, which the Comic Spirit kindles afresh on the lips ofeach rising generation, only to quench it again on the lips of thosewho 'arrive,' flowed from him copiously. He was the age indeed for'arrival,' when, as so often happens, the man of middle life, appeasedby success, dismisses the revolts of his youth. But this was still thelanguage--and the fierce language--of revolt! The decadence of Englishart and artists, the miserable commercialism of the Academy, theabsence of any first-rate teaching, of any commanding traditions, ofany 'school' worth the name--the vulgarity of the public, from royaltydownward, the snobbery of the rich world in its dealings with art:all these jeremiads which he recited were much the same--_mutatismutandis_--as those with which, half a century before, poor BenjaminHaydon had filled the 'autobiography' which is one of the capital'documents' of the artistic life. This very resemblance, indeed,occurred to Watson.

Fenwick started; with an impatient movement he pushed away the dog,who whimpered.

'Oh, come--I hope it's not as bad as that,' he said, roughly.

Watson sharply regretted his remark. Through the minds of both therepassed the same image of Haydon lying dead by his own hand beneath thevast pictures that no one would buy.

'Why you talk like this, I'm sure I don't know,' Watson said, with animpatient laugh. 'I'm always seeing your name in the papers. You havea great reputation, and I don't expect the Academy matters to your_clientele_.'

Fenwick shook his head. 'I haven't sold a picture for more than ayear--except a beastly portrait--one of the worst things I ever did.'

Fenwick said nothing, and the delicate sensibility of the otherinstantly divined that, friends as they were, the comparison withhimself had not been at all welcome to his companion. And, indeed, atthe time when Watson left England to begin the wandering life he hadbeen leading for some three years, it would have been nothing lessthan grotesque. Fenwick was then triumphant, in what, it was supposed,would be his 'first period'--that 'young man's success,' brilliant,contested, noisy, from which, indeed, many roads lead, to many goals;but with him, at that time, the omens were of the best. His pictureswere always among the events of the spring exhibitions; he hadgathered round him a group of enthusiastic pupils who worked in thestudio of the new house; and he had already received a good manyhonours at the hands of foreign juries. He was known to be on thethreshold of the Academy, and to be making, besides, a good dealof money. 'Society' had first admitted him as the _protege_ of LordFindon and the friend of Madame de Pastourelles, and was now ready toamuse itself with him, independently, as a genius and an 'eccentric.'He had many enemies; but so have all 'fighters.' The critics spokeseverely of certain radical defects in his work, due to insufficiencyof early training; defects which time might correct--or stereotype.But the critics 'must be talking'; and the public, under the spell ofa new and daring talent, appeared to take no notice.

As these recollections passed through Watson's mind, anotherexpression showed itself in the hollow-cheeked, massive face. It wasthe look of the visionary who sees in events the strange verificationof obscure instincts and divinations in which he himself perhapshas only half-believed. He and Fenwick had been friends now--in somerespects, close friends--for a good many years. Of late, they hadmet rarely, and neither of the men was a good correspondent. But thefriendship, the strong sense of congruity and liking, persisted. Ithad sprung, originally--unexpectedly enough--from that loan made toFenwick in his days of stress and poverty; and there were many whoprophesied that it would come to an end with Fenwick's success.Watson had no interest in and small tolerance for the prosperous. Hisconnexion with Cuningham, in spite of occasional letters, had droppedlong ago, ever since that clever Scotch painter had shown himselffinally possessed of the usual Scotch power to capture London and acompetence. But his liking for Fenwick had never wavered through allthe blare of Fenwick's success.

Was it that the older man with his melancholy Celtic instinct haddivined from the first that he and Fenwick were in truth of the samerace--the race of the [Greek: dusammoroi]--the ill-fated--those forwhom happiness is not written in the stars?

He sat staring at his companion, his eyes dreamily intent, takingnote of the restless depression of the man before him, and of thedisagreeable facts which emerged from his talk--declining reputation,money difficulties, and--last and most serious--a new doubt of himselfand his powers, which Watson never remembered to have noticed in himbefore.

'But you must have made a great deal of money!' he said to him once,interrupting him.

Fenwick turned away uneasily.

'So I did. But there was the new house and studio. I have been tryingto sell the house. But it's a white elephant.'

'Building's the deuce,' said Watson, gloomily. 'It ruins everybodyfrom Louis Quatorze and Walter Scott downward. Have no barns--that'smy principle--and then you can't pull 'em down and build greater! But,you know, it's all great nonsense, your talking like this! You're asclever as ever--cleverer. You've only got to _paint_--and it'll beall right. But, of course, if you will spend all your time in writingletters to the papers, and pamphlets, and that kind of thing--well!--'

He shrugged his shoulders.

Fenwick took the remark good-temperedly. 'I've finished three largepictures in eight months--if only somebody would buy 'em. And I'm inParis now'--he hesitated a moment--'on a painting job. I've promisedC----' (he named a well-known actor-manager in London) 'to helphim with the production of a new play! I never did such a thingbefore--but--'

He looked up uncertainly, his colour rising.

'What?--scenery for _The Queen's Necklace?_ I've seen the puffs in thepapers. Why not? Hope he pays well. Then you're going to Versailles,of course?'

Fenwick replied that he had taken some rooms at the Hotel desReservoirs and must make some sketches in the palace; also in thepark, and the Trianon garden. Then he rose abruptly.

'Well, and what have you been after?'

'The same old _machines_,' said Watson, tranquilly, pointing to acouple of large canvases. 'My subjects are no gayer than they used tobe. Except that--ah, yes--I forgot--I had a return upon myself thisspring--and set to work on some Bacchantes.' He stopped, and picked upa canvas which was standing with its face to the wall.

It represented a dance of Bacchantes. Fenwick looked at it in silence.Watson replaced it with a patient sigh. 'Theophile Gautier saidof some other fellow's Bacchantes that they had got drunk on"philosophical" wine. He might, I fear, have said it of mine. Anyway,I felt I was not made for Bacchantes--so I fell back on the usualthing.'

And he showed an 'Execution of a Witch'--filled with gruesome andpoignant detail--excellent in some of its ideas and single figures,but as a whole crude, horrible, and weak.

A small monkey, in a red jacket, who had been sitting unnoticed onthe top of a cabinet since Fenwick's entrance, clattered down to thefloor, and, running to his master, was soon sitting on his shoulder,staring at Fenwick with a pair of grave, soft eyes. Watson caressedhim;--and then pointed to a wicker cage outside the window in which apigeon was pecking at some Indian-corn. The cage door was wide open.'She comes to feed here by day. In the morning I wake up and hear herthere--the darling! In the evening she spreads her wings, and I watchher fly toward Saint-Cloud. No doubt the jade keeps a family there.Oh! some day she'll go--like the rest of them--and I shall miss herabominably.'

'You seem also to be favoured by mice?' said Fenwick, idly looking attwo traps on the floor beside him.

Watson smiled.

'My _femme de service_ sets those traps every night. She says we areoverrun--the greatest nonsense! As if there wasn't enough for all ofus! Then in the night--I sleep there, you see, behind that screen--Iwake, and hear some little fool squeaking. So I get up, and take thetrap downstairs in the dark--right away down--to the first floor. Andthere I let the mouse go--those folk down there are rich enough tokeep him. The only drawback is that my old woman is so cross in themorning, and she spends her life thinking of new traps. _Ah, ben!--Jela laisse faire!_'

'And this place suits you?'

'Admirably--till the cold comes. Then I march. I must have the sun.'

He shivered again. Fenwick, struck by something in his tone, looked athim more closely.

'How are you, by the way?' he asked, repentantly, 'I ought to haveinquired before. You mentioned consulting some big man here. What didhe say to you?'

'Oh, that I am phthisical, and must take care,' said Watson,carelessly--'that's no news. Ah! by the way'--he hurried the change ofsubject--'you know, of course, that Lord Findon and madame are to beat Versailles?'

'They will be there to-night,' said Fenwick, after a moment.

'Ah! to-night. Then you meet them?'

'I shall see them, of course.'

'What a blessed thing to be rid of that fellow!--What's she been doingsince?'

Fenwick replied that since the death of her husband--about a yearbefore this date--Madame de Pastourelles, worn out with nursing, hadbeen pursuing health--in Egypt and elsewhere. Her father, stepmother,and sister had been travelling with her. The sister and she were tostay at Versailles till Christmas. It was a place for which Madame dePastourelles had an old affection.

'And I suppose you know that you will find the Welbys there too?'

Fenwick made a startled movement.

'The _Welbys_? How did you hear that?'

'I had my usual half-yearly letter from Cuningham yesterday. He'sthe fellow for telling you the news. Welby has begun a big picture ofMarie Antoinette, at Trianon, and has taken a studio in Versailles forthe winter.'

Fenwick turned away and began to pace the bare floor of the studio.

'I didn't know,' he said, evidently discomposed.

'By the way, I have often meant to ask you. I trust he wasn't mixedup in the "hanging" affair?' said Watson, with a quick look at hiscompanion.

'He was ill the day it was done, but in my opinion he behaved in anextremely mean and ungenerous manner afterwards!' exclaimed Fenwick,suddenly flushing from brow to chin.

'You mean he didn't support you?'

'He shilly-shallied. He thought--I have very good reason tobelieve--that I had been badly treated--that there was personalfeeling in the matter--resentment of things that I had written--and soon but he would never come out into the open and say so!'

The excitement with which Fenwick spoke made it evident that Watsonhad touched an extremely sore point.

Watson was silent a little, lit another cigarette, and then said, witha smile:

'Poor Madame de Pastourelles!'

Fenwick looked up with irritation.

'What on earth do you mean?'

'I am wondering how she kept the peace between you--her two greatfriends.'

'She sees very little of Welby.'

'Ah! Since when?'

'Oh! for a long time. Of course they meet occasionally--'

A big, kindly smile flickered over Watson's face.

'What--was little Madame Welby jealous?'

'She would be a great goose if she were,' said Fenwick, turning asideto look through some sketches that lay on a chair beside him.

Watson shook his head, still smiling, then remarked:

'By the way, I understand she has become quite an invalid.'

'Has she?' said Fenwick. 'I know nothing of them.'

Watson began to talk of other things. But as he and Fenwick discussedthe pictures on the easels, or Fenwick's own projects, as they talkedof Manet, and Zola's 'L'Oeuvre,' and the Goncourts, as they comparedthe state of painting in London and Paris, employing all the latestphrases, both of them astonishingly well informed as to men andtendencies--Watson as an outsider, Fenwick as a passionate partisan,loathing the Impressionists, denouncing a show of Manet and Renoirrecently opened at a Paris dealer's--Watson's inner mind was reallyfull of Madame de Pastourelles, and that _salon_ of hers in theold Westminster house in Dean's Yard, of which during so many yearsFenwick had made one of the principal figures. It should perhapsbe explained that some two years after Fenwick's arrival in London,Madame de Pastourelles had thought it best to establish a little_menage_ of her own, distinct from the household in St. James'sSquare. Her friends and her stepmother's were not always congenial toeach other; and in many ways both Lord Findon and she were the happierfor the change. Her small panelled rooms had quickly become themeeting-place of a remarkable and attractive society. Watson himself,indeed, had never been an _habitue_ of that or any other drawing-room.As he had told Lord Findon long ago, he was not for the world, nor theworld for him. But whereas his volatile lordship could never draw himfrom his cell, Lord Findon's daughter was sometimes irresistible, andWatson's great shaggy head and ungainly person was occasionally tobe seen beside her fire, in the years before he left London. He had,therefore, been a spectator of Fenwick's gradual transformation at thehands of a charming woman; he had marked the stages of the process;and he knew well that it had never excited a shadow of scandal in theminds of any reasonable being. All the same, the deep store of hiddensentiment which this queer idealist possessed had been touched bythe position. The young woman isolated and childless, so charming,so nobly sincere, so full of heart--was she to be always Ariadne,and forsaken? The man--excitable, nervous, selfish, yet, in truth,affectionate and dependent--what folly, or what chivalry kept himunmarried? Ever since the death of M. le Comte de Pastourelles, dreamsconcerning these two people had been stirring in the brain of Watson,and these dreams spoke now in the dark eyes he bent on Fenwick.

Presently, Fenwick began to talk gloomily of the death of his oldBernard Street landlady, who had become his housekeeper and factotumin the new Chelsea house and studio, which he had built for himself.

'I don't know what I shall do without her. For eleven years I've neverpaid a bill or engaged a servant for myself. She's done everything.Every morning she used to give me my pocket-money for the day.'

'The remedy, after all, is simple,' said Watson, with a sudden turn ofthe head.

He stood a moment bending over Watson--his eyes staring, his mouthopen. Then he controlled himself.

'You talk as though she were round the corner,' he said, turning awayand buttoning his coat afresh. 'But please understand, my dear fellow,that she is not round the corner, nor likely to be.'

He spoke with a hard emphasis, smiling, and slapping the breast of hiscoat.

Watson looked at him and said no more.

Fenwick walked rapidly along the Quai Voltaire, crossed the Pont Neuf,and found himself inside the enclosure of the Louvre. Twenty minutesto four. Some impulse, born of the seething thoughts within, took himto the door of the Musee. He mounted rapidly, and found himself in thelarge room devoted to the modern French school.

He went straight to two pictures by Hippolyte Flandrin--'Madame Vinet'and 'Portrait de Jeune Fille.' When, in the first year of his Londonlife, he had made his hurried visits to Paris, these pictures, then inthe Luxembourg, had been among those which had most vitally affectedhim. The beautiful surface and keeping which connected them withthe old tradition, together with the modern spirit, the trenchantsimplicity of their portraiture, had sent him back--eager andpalpitating--to his own work on the picture of Madame de Pastourelles,or on the last stages of the 'Genius Loci.'

He looked into them now, sharply, intently, his heart beating tosuffocation under the stress of that startling phrase of Watson's.Still tremulous--as one in flight--he made himself recognise certaindetails of drawing and modelling in 'Madame Vinet' which had given himhints for the improvement of the portrait of Phoebe; and, again,the ease with which the head moves on its shoulders, its relief, itsrefinement--how he had toiled to rival them in his picture of MadameEugenie!--translating as he best could the cold and disagreeablecolour of the Ingres school into the richer and more romantic handlingof an art influenced by Watts and Burne-Jones!

Then he passed on to the young girl's portrait--the girl in whitemuslin, turning away her graceful head from the spectator, and showingthereby the delicacy of her profile, the wealth of her brown hair, thebeauty of her young and virginal form. Suddenly, his eyes clouded;he turned abruptly away, left the room without looking at anotherpicture, and was soon hurrying through the crowded streets northwardtowards the Gare Saint-Lazare.

Carrie!--his child!--his own flesh and blood. His heart cried out forher. Watson's _brusquerie_--the young girl of the picture--and hisown bitter and disappointed temper--they had all their share in theemotion which possessed him.

The child whom he remembered, with her mother's eyes, and that lightmutinous charm, which was not Phoebe's--why, she was now seventeen!--alittle younger--only a little younger, than the girl of the portrait.His longing fancy pursued her--saw her a wild, pretty, laughing thing,nearly a woman--and then fell back passionately on a more familiarimage!--of the baby at his knee, open-mouthed, her pink lips roundedfor the tidbit just about to descend upon them, her sweet andsparkling eyes fixed upon her father.

'My God!--where are they?--are they alive, or dead? Howcruel--_cruel_!' And he ground his teeth in one of those paroxysmswhich every now and then, at long intervals, represented the returnupon him of the indestructible past. Often for months together itmeant little or nothing to him, but the dull weight of his secret;twelve years had inevitably deadened feeling, and filled the mind withfresh interests, while of late the tumult of his Academy and Presscampaign had silenced the stealing, distant voices. Yet there weremoments when all was as fresh and poignant as it had been in the firsthours, when Phoebe, with her golden head and her light, springingstep, seemed to move beside him, and he felt the drag of a small handin his.

He stiffened himself--like one attacked. The ghosts of dead hours cametrooping and eddying round him, like the autumn leaves that had begunto strew the Paris streets--all the scenes of that first ghastly weekwhen he had hunted in desperation for his lost wife and child. Hisjoyous return from Chelsea, on the evening of his good-fortune--Mrs.Gibbs's half-sulky message on the door-step that 'Mrs. Fenwick' wasin the studio--his wild rush upstairs--the empty room, the letter, thering:--his hurried journey North--the arrival at the Langdale cottage,only to find on the table of the deserted parlour another letter fromPhoebe, written before she left Westmoreland, in the prevision thathe would come there in search of a clue, and urging him for both theirsakes to make no scandal, no hue and cry, to accept the inevitable,and let her go in peace--his interview with the servant Daisy, who hadwaited with the child in an hotel close to Euston, while Phoebe wentto Bernard Street, and had been sent back to the North immediatelyafter Phoebe's return, without the smallest indication of whather mistress meant to do--his fruitless consultations with AnnaMason!--the whole dismal story rose before him, as it was wont to doperiodically, filling him with the same rage, the same grief, the samefierce and inextinguishable resentment.

Phoebe had destroyed his life. She had not only robbed him of herselfand of their child, she had forced him into an acted lie which hadpoisoned his whole existence, and, first and foremost, that graciousand beautiful friendship which was all, save his art, that she hadleft him. For, in the first moments of his despair and horror, he hadremembered what it would mean to Madame de Pastourelles, did she everknow that his mad wife had left him out of jealousy of her. He wasnot slow to imagine the effect of Phoebe's action on that proud, purenature and sensitive conscience; and he knew what she and herfather must feel towards the deception which had led her into such aposition, and made such a tragedy possible. He foresaw her recoil, herbitter condemnation, the final ruin of the relation between himselfand her; and yet more than these did he dread her pain, her causeless,innocent pain. To stab the hand which had helped him, the heart whichhad already suffered so much, in the very first hours of his own shockand misery, he had shrunk from this, he had tried his best to protectMadame de Pastourelles.

Hence the compact with his landlady, by which he had in fact bribedher to silence, and transformed her into a devoted servant alwaysunder his eye; hence the various means by which he had found itpossible to quiet the members of his own family and of Phoebe's--needyfolk, most of them, cannily unwilling to make an enemy of a man whowas likely, so they understood, to be rich, and who already showed ahelpful disposition. When once he had convinced himself that he hadno clue, and that Phoebe had disappeared, it had not been difficultindeed to keep his secret, and to hide the traces of his ownwrong-doing, his own share in the catastrophe. Between Phoebe's worldand the world in which he was now to live, there were few or no links.Bella Morrison might have supplied one. But she and her motherhad moved to Guernsey, and a year after Phoebe's flight Fenwickascertained that old Mrs. Morrison was dead, and that Bella had goneto South America as companion to a lady.

So in an incredibly short time the crisis was over. The last phase wasconnected with the cousin--Freddy Tolson--who had visited Phoebe thenight before her journey to London, and was now in New South Wales.

A letter from Fenwick to this young man, containing a number ofquestions as to his conversation with Phoebe, and written immediatelyafter Phoebe's flight, obtained an answer after some three or fourmonths, but Tolson's reply was wholly unprofitable. He merely avowedthat he had discovered nothing at all of Phoebe's intention, andcould throw no light whatever upon her disappearance. The letterwas laboriously written by a man of imperfect education, and barelycovered three loosely written sides of ordinary note-paper. It arrivedwhen Fenwick's own researches were already at a standstill, and seemedto leave nothing more to hope for. The police inquiries which had beeninitiated went on intermittently for a while, then ceased; the watersof life closed over Phoebe Fenwick and her child.

What was Fenwick's present feeling towards his wife? If amid thiscrowded Paris he had at last beheld her coming to him, had seen thetall figure and the childish look, and the lovely, pleading eyes,would his heart have leapt within him?--would his hands have beenoutstretched to enfold and pardon her?--or would he have looked at hersombrely, unable to pass the gulf between them--to forget what she haddone?

In truth, he could not have answered the question; he was uncertainof himself. Her act, by its independence, its force of will, and theability she had shown in planning and carrying it out, had transformedhis whole conception of her. In a sense, he knew her no longer. Thatshe could do a thing at once so violent and so final, was so whollyout of keeping with all his memories of her, that he could only thinkof the woman who had come in his absence to the Bernard Street studio,and defaced the sketch of Madame de Pastourelles, as in some sort astranger--one whom, were she to step back into his life, he wouldhave had to learn afresh. Sometimes, when anything reminded him of hersuddenly--as, for instance, the vision in a shop-window of the verypopular mezzotint which had been made from the 'Genius Loci' the yearafter its success in the Academy--the pang from which he sufferedwould seem to show that he still loved her, as indeed he had alwaysloved her, through all the careless selfishness of his behaviour. But,again, there were many months when she dropped altogether--or seemedto drop--out of his mind and memory, when he was entirely absorbed inthe only interests she had left him--his art, his quarrels, and hisrelation to Eugenie de Pastourelles.

There was a time, indeed--some two or three years after thecatastrophe--when he passed through a stage of mental and moraltumult, natural to a man of strong passions and physique. Even intheir first married life, Phoebe had been sometimes jealous, and withreason. It was her memory of these occasions that had predisposed herto the mad suspicion which wrecked her. And when she had deserted him,he came violently near, on one or two occasions, to things base andirreparable. But he was saved--first by the unconscious influence, themere trust, of a good woman--and, secondly, by his keen and advancingintelligence. Dread lest he should cast himself out of Eugenie'sdelightful presence; and the fighting life of the mind: it was bythese he was rescued, by these he ultimately conquered.

And yet, was it, perhaps, his bitterest grievance against his wifethat she had, in truth, left him _nothing_!--not even friendship, noteven art. In so wrenching herself from him, she had perpetuated inhim that excitable and unstable temper it should have been her firstobject to allay, and had thus injured and maimed his artistic power;while at the same time she had so troubled, so falsified his wholeattitude towards the woman who on his wife's disappearance from hislife had become naturally and insensibly his dearest friend, thatnot even the charm of Madame de Pastourelles' society, of hertrue, delicate, and faithful affection, could give him any lastinghappiness. He himself had begun the falsification, but it was Phoebe'sact which had prolonged and compelled it, through twelve years.

For a long time, indeed, his success as an artist steadily developed.The very energy of his resentment--his inner denunciation--of hiswife's flight, the very force of his fierce refusal to admit that hehad given her the smallest real justification for such a step, hadquickened in him for a time all the springs of life. Through hispainting, as we have seen, he wrestled out his first battles withfate and with temptation; and those early years were the years ofhis artistic triumph, as they were also the years of Madame dePastourelles' strongest influence upon him. But the concealment onwhich his life was based, the tragedy at the heart of it, workedlike 'a worm i' the bud.' The first check to his artistic career--the'hanging' incident and its sequel--produced an effect of shockand disintegration out of all proportion to its apparentcause--inexplicable indeed to the spectators.

Madame de Pastourelles wondered, and sorrowed. But she could donothing to arrest the explosion of egotism, arrogance, and passionwhich Fenwick allowed himself, after his breach with the Academy. Theobscure causes of it were hidden from her; she could only pity andgrieve; and Fenwick, unable to satisfy her, unable to re-establish hisown equilibrium, full of remorse towards her, and of despair about hisart, whereof the best forces and inspirations seemed to have witheredwithin him like a gourd in the night, went from one folly to another,while his pictures steadily deteriorated, his affairs became involved,and a shrewd observer like Lord Findon wondered who or what the deucehad got hold of him--whether he had begun to take morphia--or hadfallen into the clutches of a woman.

In the midst of these developments, so astonishing and disappointingto Fenwick's best friends, Eugenie de Pastourelles was suddenlysummoned to the death-bed of the husband from whom she had beenseparated for nearly fifteen years. It was now nearly twelve monthssince Fenwick had seen her; and it was his eagerness to meet heragain, much more than the necessities of his new commission, whichhad brought him out post-haste to Paris and Versailles, where, indeed,Lord Findon, in a kind letter, had suggested that he should join them.

* * * * *

Amid these memories and agitations, he found himself presently atthe Gare Saint-Lazare, taking his ticket at the _guichet_. It wascharacteristic of him that he bought a first-class return withoutthinking of it, and then, when he found himself pompously alone inhis compartment, while crowds were hurrying into the second-class, hereproached himself for extravagance, and passed the whole journey ina fume of discomfort. For eight or nine years he had been rich; and heloathed the small ways of poverty.

Versailles was in the glow of an autumn sunset, as he walked from thestation to the famous Hotel des Reservoirs on the edge of the Park.The white houses, the wide avenues, the chateau on its hill, weresteeped in light--a light golden, lavish, and yet melancholy, asthough the autumn day still remembered the October afternoon whenMarie Antoinette turned to look for the last time at the lake and thewoods of Trianon.

As Fenwick crossed the Rue de la Paroisse, a lady on the other side ofthe road, who was hurrying in the opposite direction, stopped suddenlyat sight of him, and stared excitedly. She was a woman no longeryoung, much sunburnt, with high cheek-bones and a florid complexion.He did not notice her, and after a moment's hesitation she resumed herwalk.

He went into the Park, where the statues shone flamelike amid thebronze and orange of the trees, where the water of the fountains wasdyed in blue and rose, and all the faded magnificence and decayinggrace of the vast incomparable scene were kindling into an hour's richlife, under the last attack of the sun. He wandered a while, restlessand unhappy--yet always counting the hours till he should see theslight, worn figure which for a year had been hidden from him.

He dined in the well-known restaurant, wandered again in the milddusk, then mounted to his room and worked a while at some of thesketches he was making for his new commission. While he was soengaged, a carriage drew up below, and two persons descended. Herecognised Lord Findon, much aged and whitened in these last years.The lady in deep mourning behind him paused a moment on the broadpathway, and looked round her, at the hill of the chateau, atthe bright lights in the restaurant. She threw back her veil, andFenwick's heart leapt as he recognised the spiritual beauty, thepatient sweetness of a face which through twelve troubled years hadkept him from evil and held him to good--had been indeed 'the masterlight' of all his seeing.

And to his best and only friend he had lied, persistently andunforgiveably, for twelve years. There was the sting--and there thepity of it.

CHAPTER X

Eugenie de Pastourelles was sitting on the terrace at Versailles. Orrather she was established in one of the deep embrasures between thewindows, on the western side. The wind was cold, but again a glorioussun bathed the terrace and the chateau. It was a day of splendour--aday when heaven and earth seemed to have conspired to flatter and toadorn the vast creation of Louis Quatorze, this white, flaming palace,amid the gold and bronze of its autumn trees, and the blue of itswaters. Superb clouds, of a royal sweep and amplitude, sailed throughthe brilliant sky; the woods that girdled the horizon were paintedbroadly and solidly in the richest colour upon an immense canvassteeped in light. In some of the nearer alleys which branch from theterrace, the eye travelled, through a deep magnificence of shade, toan arched and framed sunlight beyond, embroidered with every radiantor sparkling colour; in others, the trees, almost bare, met lightlyarched above a carpet of intensest green--a _tapis vert_ stretchingtoward a vaporous distance, and broken by some god, or nymph, on whosewhite shoulders the autumn leaves were dropping softly one by one.

Wide horizons, infinitely clear--a blazing intensity of light, beatingon the palace, the gardens, the statues, and the distant water ofthe 'Canal de Versailles'--each tint and outline, sharp and vehement,full-bodied and rich--the greenest greens, the bluest blues, the mostdazzling gold:--this was Versailles, as Eugenie saw it, on this autumnday. And through it all, the blowing of a harsh and nipping windsounded the first approach of winter, still defied, as it were, bythese bright woods decked for a last festival.

It was the 5th of October--the very anniversary of the day when MarieAntoinette, sitting alone beside the lake at Trianon, was startled bya page from the chateau bringing the news of the arrival of the Parismob, and the urgent summons to return at once;--the day when shepassed the Temple of Love, gleaming amid the quiet streams, forthe last time, and fled back through the leafy avenues leading toVersailles, under a sky--cloudy and threatening rain--which wasremembered by a later generation as blending fitly with the first actof that most eminent tragedy--'The Fall of the House of France.'

Madame de Pastourelles had in her hand a recent book in which a Frenchman of letters, both historian and poet, had told once again the mostpiteous of stories; a story, however, which seemed then, and stillseems, to be not even yet ripe for history--so profound and livingare the sympathies and the passions which to this day surround it inFrance.

Eugenie had closed the book, and her eyes, as they looked out upon theastonishing light and shade of the terrace and its surroundings, hadfilled unconsciously with tears, not so much for Marie Antoinette,as for all griefs!--for this duped, tortured, struggling lifeof ours--for the 'mortalia' which grip all hearts, which noneescape--pain, and separation, and remorse, hopes deceived, and promisemocked, decadence in one's self, change in others, and that irongentleness of death which closes all.

For nearly a year she had been trying to recover her forces after anexperience which had shaken her being to its depths. Not because,when she went to nurse his last days, she had any love left, in theordinary sense, for her ruined and debased husband; but because ofthat vast power of pity, that genius for compassion to which shewas born. Not a tremor of body or soul, not a pang of physical orspiritual fear, but she had passed through them, in common with theman she upheld; a man who, like Louis the Well-Beloved, former masterof the building beneath whose shadow she was sitting, was ready togrovel for her pardon, when threatened with a priest and the lastterrors, and would have recalled his mistress, rejoicing, with thefirst day of recovered health.

He and she had asked for respite in vain, however; and M. dePastourelles slept with his fathers.

Since his death, her strength had failed her. There had been nodefinite illness, but a giving way for some six or seven months ofnature's resisting powers. Also--significant sign of the strength ofall her personal affections!--in addition to the moral and physicalstrain she had undergone, she had suffered much about this time fromthe loss of her maid, an old servant and devoted friend, who left hershortly after M. de Pastourelles' death--incited, forced thereto byEugenie--in order to marry and go out to Canada. Eugenie had missedher sorely; and insensibly, the struggle to get well had been theharder. The doctors ordered travel and change, and she had wanderedfrom place to place; only half-conscious, as it often seemed to her;the most docile of patients; accompanied now by one member of thefamily, now by another; standing as it were, like the bather who haswandered too far from shore, between the onward current which meansdestruction, and that backward struggle of the will which leads tolife. And little by little the tide of being had turned. Aftera winter in Egypt, strength had begun to come back; since thenSwitzerland and high air had quickened recovery; and now, physically,Eugenie was almost herself again.

But morally, she retained a deep and lasting impress of what she hadgone through. More than ever was she a creature of tenderness, of themost delicate perceptions, of a sensibility, as our ancestors wouldhave called it, too great for this hurrying world. Her unselfishness,always one of her cradle-gifts, had become almost superhuman; and hadshe been of another temperament, the men and women about her mighthave instinctively shrunk from her, as too perfect--now--for humannature's daily food. But from that she was saved by a score of mostwomanish, most mundane qualities. Nobody knew her, luckily, for thesaint she was; she herself least of all. As her strength reneweditself, her soft fun, too, came back, her gentle, inexhaustibledelight in the absurdities of men and things, which gave to her talkand her personality a kind of crackling charm, like the crispness ofdry leaves upon an autumn path. Naturally, and invincibly, she lovedlife and living; all the high forces and emotions called to her, butalso all the patches, stains, and follies of this queer world; andthere is no saint, man or woman, of whom this can be said, that hasever repelled the sinners. It is the difference between St. Francisand St. Dominic!

How very little--all the same--could Eugenie feel herself with thesaints, on this October afternoon! She sat, to begin with, on thethreshold of Madame de Pompadour's apartment; and in the next place,she had never been more tremulously steeped in doubts and yearnings,entirely concerned with her friends and her affections. It was are-birth; not of youth--how could that be, she herself would haveasked, seeing that she was now thirty-seven?--but of the naturalEugenie, who, 'intellectual' though she were, lived really by theheart, and the heart only. And since it is the heart that makes youthand keeps it--it _was_ a return of youth--and of beauty--that had comeupon her. In her black dress and shady hat, her collar and cuffs ofwhite lawn, she was very discreetly, quietly beautiful; the passer-bydid not know what it was that had touched and delighted him, till shehad gone, and he found himself, perhaps, looking after the slimyet stately figure; but it was beauty none the less. And the autumnviolets, her sister's gift, that were fastened to-day in profusionat her waist, marked in truth the re-awakening of buried things, offeminine instincts long repressed. For months, her maid Fanchette haddressed her, and she had worn obediently all the long crape gowns andveils dictated by the etiquette of French mourning. But to-day shehad chosen for herself; and in this more ordinary garb, she wasvaguely--sometimes remorsefully--conscious of relief and deliverance.

Two subjects filled her mind. First, a conversation with Fenwick thatshe had held that morning, strolling through the upper alleys ofthe Park. Poor friend, poor artist! Often and often, during herwanderings, had her thoughts dwelt anxiously on his discontents andcalamities; she had made her sister or her father write to him whenshe could not write herself--though Lord Findon indeed had been forlong much out of patience with him; and during the last few months sheherself had written every week. But she had never felt so clearly theinexorable limits of her influence with him. This morning, just asof old, he had thrown himself tempestuously upon her advice, hersympathy; and she had given him counsel as she best could. But a womanknows when her counsel is likely to be followed, or no. Eugenie had noillusions. In his sore, self-tormented state he was, she saw, atthe mercy of any passing idea, of anything that seemed to offer himvengeance on his enemies, or the satisfaction of a vanity that writhedunder the failure he was all the time inviting and assuring.

Yet as she thought of him, she liked him better than ever. He might beperverse, yet he appealed to her profoundly! The years of his successhad refined and civilised him no doubt, but they had tended to makehim like anybody else. Whereas this passionate accent of revolt--as ofsome fierce, helpless creature, struggling blindly in bonds of its ownmaking--had perhaps restored to him that more dramatic element whichhis personality had possessed in his sulky, gifted youth. Hehad expressed himself with a bitter force on the decline of hisinspiration and the weakening of his will. He was going to the dogs,he declared; had lost all his hold on the public; and had nothing moreto say or to paint. And she had been very, very sorry for him, butconscious all the time that he had never been so eloquent, and neverin such good looks, what with the angry energy of the eyes, and thesweep of grizzled hair across the powerful brow, and the lines cut bylife and thought round the vigorous, impatient mouth. How could he beat once so able and so childish! Her woman's wit pondered it; whileat the same time she remembered with emotion the joy with which he hadgreeted her, his eager, stammering sympathy, his rough grasp of herhand, his frowning scrutiny of her pale face.

Yes, he was a great, great friend--and, somehow, she _must_ help him!Her lips parted in a sigh of aspiration. If only this unlucky thinghad not happened!--this meeting of Arthur and of Fenwick, before thetime, before she had prepared and engineered it.

And so she came to her second topic of meditation. Gradually as hermind pursued it, her aspect seemed to lose its new and tremulousbrightness; the face became once more a little grey and pinched. Theyhad somehow missed all the letters which should have warned them. Tofind Arthur established here, with his poor invalid wife--nothinghad been more unexpected, and, alack, more unwelcome, considering therelations between them and John Fenwick--Fenwick who was practicallyher father's guest and hers.

Did Arthur think it strange, unkind? Wouldn't he really believe thatit was pure accident! If so, it would be only because Elsie was there,influencing him against his old friends--poor, bitter, stricken Elsie.Eugenie's lips quivered. There flitted before her the image of thegirl of eighteen--muse of laughter and delight. And she recalledthe taciturn woman whom she had seen on her sofa the night before,speaking coldly, in dry, sharp sentences, to her husband, her cousin,her maid--evidently unhappy and in pain.

Eugenie shaded her eyes from the light of the terrace. Her heartseemed to be sinking, contracting. Mrs. Welby had been already ill,and therewith jealous and tyrannical, for some little time beforeMadame de Pastourelles had been summoned to the death-bed of herhusband! But now!--Eugenie shrank aghast before what she saw and whatshe guessed.

And it was, too, as if the present state of things--as if the newhardness in Elsie's eyes, and the strange hostility of her manner,especially towards the Findons, and her cousin Eugenie--threw light onearlier years, on many a puzzling trait and incident of the past.

There had been a terrible confinement, at the end of years ofchildlessness--a still-born child--and then, after a short apparentrecovery, a rapid loss of strength and power. Poor, poor Elsie! Butwhy--why should this trouble have awakened in her this dumb tyrannytowards Arthur, this alienation from Arthur's friends?

Eugenie sharply drew herself together. She banished her thoughts.Elsie was young, and would get well. And when she recovered, she wouldknow who were her friends, and Arthur's.

A figure came towards her, crossing the _parterre d'eau_. Sheperceived her father--just released, no doubt, from two Englishacquaintances with whom he had been exploring the 'Bosquet d'Apollon.'

He hurried towards her--a tall Don Quixote of a man, gaunt, active,grey-haired, with a stride like a youth of eighteen, and the veryminimum of flesh on his well-hung frame. Lord Findon had gone throughmany agitations during the last ten or twelve years. In his ownopinion, he had upset a Ministry, he had recreated the army, and savedthe Colonies to the Empire. That history was not as well aware ofthese feats as it should be, he knew; but in the memoirs, of whichthere were now ten volumes privately printed in his drawer, hehad provided for that. Meanwhile, in the rush of his opinions andpartisanships, two things at least had persisted unchanged--hisadoration for Eugenie--and his belief that if only man--and much morewoman--would but exchange 'gulping' for 'chewing'--would only, thatis to say, reform their whole system of mastication, and thereby ofdigestion, the world would be another and a happier place.

He came up now, frowning, and out of temper.

'Upon my word, Eugenie, the blindness of some people is too amazing!'

'Is it? Sit down, papa, and look at that!'

She pushed a chair towards him, smiling, and pointed to the terrace,the woods, the sky.

'It's all very well, my dear,' said Lord Findon, seating himself--'butthis place tries me a good deal.'

'Because the ladies in the restaurant are so stout?' said Eugenie.'Dear papa--somebody must keep these cooks in practice!'

'Never did I see such spectacles!' said Lord Findon, fuming. 'And whenone knows that the very smallest attention to their diet--and theymight be sylphs again--as young as their grandchildren!--it's reallydisheartening.'

'It is,' said Eugenie. 'Shall we announce a little conference in thesalon? I'm sure the ladies would flock.'

'The amount the French eat is appalling!' exclaimed LordFindon--without noticing. 'And they have such ridiculous ideas aboutus! I said something about their gluttony to M. de Villeton thismorning--and he fired up!--declared he had spent this summer inEnglish country-houses, and we had seven meals a day--all told--andthere wasn't a Frenchman in the world had more than three--countinghis coffee in the morning.'

'He had us there,' said Eugenie.

'Not at all! It doesn't matter _when_ you eat--it's what and how muchyou eat. We _can't_ produce such women as one sees here. I tell you,Eugenie, we _can't_. It takes all the poetry out of the sex.'

Eugenie smiled.

'Haven't you been walking with Lady Marney, papa?'

Lord Findon looked a little annoyed.

'She's an exception, my dear--a hideous exception.'

'I wouldn't mind her size,' said Eugenie, softly--'if only thecomplexion were better done.'

Lord Findon laughed.

'Paint is on the increase,' he declared--'and gambling too. Villetontells me there was baccarat in the Marney's' apartment last night,and Lady Marney lost enormously. Age seems to have no effect on thesepeople. She must be nearly seventy-five.'

'You may be sure she'll play till the last trump,' said Eugenie.'Papa!'--her tone changed--'is that Elsie's chair?'

The group to which she pointed was still distant, but Lord Findon,even at seventy, had the eyes of an eagle, and could read an _affiche_a mile off.

'It is.' Lord Findon looked a little disturbed, and, turning, hescanned the terrace up and down before he bent towards Eugenie.

'You know, darling, it's an awkward business about these two men. Idon't believe Arthur's patience will hold out.'

'Oh yes, it will, papa. For our sakes, Arthur would keep the peace.'

'If the other will let him! I used to think, Eugenie, you had tamedthe bear--but, upon my soul!'--Lord Findon threw up his hands inprotest.

'He's in low spirits, papa. It will be better soon,' said Eugenie,softly, and as she spoke she rose and went down the steps to meet theWelbys.

Lord Findon followed her, tormented by a queer, unwelcome thought.Was it possible that Eugenie was now--with her widowhood--beginning totake a more than friendly interest in that strange fellow, Fenwick? Ifso, _he_ would be tolerably punished for his meddling of long ago!To have snatched her from Arthur, in order to hand her to JohnFenwick!--Lord Findon crimsoned hotly at the notion, all his pride ofrace and caste up in arms.

Of course she ought now to marry. He wished to see her before he diedthe wife of some good fellow, and the mistress of a great house. Whynot? Eugenie's distinctions of person and family--leaving her fortune,which was considerable, out of count--were equal to any fate. 'It'sall very well to despise such things--but we have to keep up thetraditions,' he said to himself, testily.

And in spite of her thirty-seven years a suitable bridegroom would notbe at all hard to find. Lord Findon had perceived that in Egypt,where they had spent the winter and early spring. Several of the mostdistinguished men then in Cairo had been her devoted slaves--ill asshe was and at half-power. Alderney--almost certain to be the nextViceroy of India--one of the most charming of widowers, with an onlydaughter--it had been plain both to Lord Findon and his stupid wifethat Eugenie had made a deep impression upon a man no less romanticthan fastidious. Eugenie had but to lift her hand, and he would havefollowed them to Syria. On the contrary, she had taken special painsto prevent it. And General F,--and that clever fellow X,--who was nowreorganising Egyptian finance--and several more--they were all underthe spell.

But Eugenie had this quixotic liking for the 'intellectuals' of aparticular sort, for artists and poets, and people in difficultiesgenerally. Well, he had it himself, he reflected, frowning, as hestrolled after her; but there were limits. Marriage was a thing apart;in that quarter, at any rate, it was no good supposing you couldescape from the rules of the game.

Not that the rules always led you right--witness De Pastourelles andhis villainies. But matrimonial anarchy was not to be justified,any more than social anarchy, by the failures and drawbacks ofarrangements which were on the whole for people's good. _Passeencore_!--if Fenwick had only fulfilled the promise of hisyouth!--were at least a successful artist, instead of promising tobecome a quarrelsome failure!

Now if Arthur himself were free! Supposing this poor girl were tosuccumb?--what then?

At this point Lord Findon checked himself roughly, and a minuteafterwards was shaking Welby by the hand and stooping with an oldman's courtesy over the invalid carriage in which Mrs. Welby layreclined.

Euphrosyne, indeed, had shed her laughter! A face with sunken eyesand drawn lips, and with that perpetual suspicious furrow in the brow,which meant a terror lest any movement or jar should let loose theenemy, pain; an emaciated body, from which all the soft mouldings ofyouth had departed; a frail hand, lying in mute appeal on the shawlwith which she was covered:--this was now Elsie Welby, whose beautyin the first years of her marriage had been one of the adornments ofLondon.

Eugenie was bending over her, and Mrs. Welby was pettishly answering.

'It's so stiff and formal. I don't admire this kind of thing. Andthere isn't a bit of shade on this terrace. _I_ think it's ugly!'

Welby laid a hand on hers, smiling.

'But to-day, Bebe, you like the sun?--in October?'

Mrs. Welby was very decidedly of opinion that even in October therewas a glare--and in August--she shuddered to think of it! It was sotiresome, too, to have missed the Grandes Eaux. So like French redtape, to insist on stopping them on a particular date. Why should theybe stopped? As to expense, that was nonsense. How could watercost anything! It was because the French were so _doctrinaire_, sotyrannical--so fond of managing for managing's sake.

'Upon my word, it begins to get cold. With your leave, Elsie, I coulddo with a little more sun! Arthur, shall we take a brisk walk roundthe canal before tea?'

Welby looked anxiously at his wife. She had closed her eyes, and herpale lips, tightly shut, made no movement.

'I think I promised Elsie to stay with her,' he said, uncertainly.

'Let _me_ stay with Elsie, please,' said Eugenie.

The blue eyes unclosed.

'Don't be more than an hour, Arthur,' said the young wife,ungraciously. 'You know I asked Mrs. Westmacott to tea.'

The gentlemen walked off, and a sharp sensation impressed upon Madamede Pastourelles that Arthur was only allowed to go with Lord Findon,because _she_ was not of the party.

A sudden colour rose into her cheeks. For the hour that followed,she devoted herself to her cousin. But Mrs. Welby was difficult andquerulous. Amongst other complaints she expressed herself bitterlyas to the appearance of Mr. Fenwick at Versailles. Arthur had been sotaken aback--Mr. Fenwick was always so atrociously rude to him! Arthurwould have never come to Versailles had he known; but of course, asUncle Findon and Eugenie liked Mr. Fenwick, as he was their friend,Arthur couldn't now avoid meeting him. It was extremely disagreeable.

'I think they needn't meet very much,' said Eugenie, soothingly--'andpapa and I will do our best to keep Mr. Fenwick in order.'

'I wonder why he came,' said Elsie, fretfully.

'He has some work to do for the production of this play on MarieAntoinette. And I suppose he wanted to meet us. You see, we didn'tknow about Arthur.'

'I can't think why you like him so much.'

'He is an old friend, my dear!--and just now very unhappy, and out ofspirits.'

'All his own fault, Arthur says. He had the ball at his feet.'

'I know,' said Eugenie, smiling sadly. 'That's the tragedy of it!'

There was silence. Mrs. Welby still observed her companion. A varietyof expressions, all irritable or hostile, passed through the large,languid eyes.

* * * * *

The afternoon faded--on the blue surface of the distant 'canal,' thegreat poplars that stand sentinel at the western edge of the Park,one to right, and one to left--last _gardes du corps_ of the House ofFrance!--threw long shadows on the water; and across the openingwhich they marked, drifted the smoke of burning weeds, the only butsufficient symbol, amid the splendid scene, of that peasant Francewhich destroyed Versailles. It was four o'clock, and to their left, asthey sat sheltered on the southern side of the chateau, the visitorsof the day were pouring out into the gardens. The shutters of thelower rooms, in the apartments of the Dauphin and of Mesdames, werebeing closed one by one, by the _gardiens_ within. Eugenie peeredthrough the window beside her. She saw before her a long vista ofdarkened and solitary rooms, dim portraits of the marshals of Francejust visible on their walls. Suddenly--under a gleam of light from ashutter not yet fastened--there shone out amid the shadows a bustof Louis Seize! The Bourbon face, with its receding brow, its heavy,good-natured lips, its smiling incapacity, held--dominated--thepalace.

Eugenie watched, holding her breath. Slowly the light died; the marblewithdrew into the dark; and Louis Seize was once more with the ghosts.

Eugenie's fancy pursued him. She thought of the night of the 20thof January, 1793, when Madame Royale, in the darkness of the Temple,heard her mother turning miserably on her bed, sleepless with griefand cold, waiting for that last rendezvous of seven o'clock which theKing had promised her--waiting--waiting--till the great bell of NotreDame told her that Louis had passed to another meeting, more urgent,more peremptory still.

'What on earth do you mean!' said Mrs. Welby's voice besideher--startled--stiff--a little suspicious.

Eugenie looked up and blushed.

'I beg your pardon!--I was thinking of Marie Antoinette.'

'I'm so tired of Marie Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising apetulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the sillymemorials of her they sell here!--and the sentimental talk about her!Arthur, of course, now--with his picture--thinks of nothing else.'

'Naturally!'

'I don't know. People are bored with Marie Antoinette. I wish he'dtaken another subject. And as to her beauty--how could she have beenbeautiful, with those staring eyes, and that lower lip! I say so toArthur--and he raves--and quotes Horace Walpole--and all sorts ofpeople. But one can see for one's self. People are much prettier nowthan they ever were then! We should think nothing of their beauties.'

And the delicate lips of this once lovely child, this flower witheredbefore its time, made a cold gesture of contempt.

In Eugenie's eyes, as they rested upon her companion, there was aflash--was it of horror?

Was she jealous even of the dead women whom Arthur painted?--no lessthan of his living friends?

Eugenie came close to her, took the irresponsive hand in hers, tuckedthe shawls closer round the wasted limbs, bent over her, chattingand caressing. Then, as the sun began to drop quickly, Madame dePastourelles rose, and went to the corner of the chateau, to see ifthe gentlemen were in sight. But in less than a minute Mrs. Welbycalled her back.

'I must go in now,' she said, fretfully. 'This place is really _too_cold!'

But when Elsie had been safely escorted home, Eugenie slipped backthrough the darkening streets, taking good care that her path shouldnot lead her across her father and Arthur Welby.

She fled towards the western flight of the Hundred Steps, and ran downthe vast staircase towards the Orangerie, and the still shining lakebeyond, girdled with vaporous woods. A majesty of space and lightenwrapt her, penetrated, as everywhere at Versailles, with memory,with the bitterness and the glory of human things. In the distance thevoices of the children, still playing beside their nurses on the upperterrace, died away. Close by, a white Artemis on her pedestal bentforward--eager--her gleaming bow in air, watching, as it were, thearrow she had just sped toward the windows of Madame de Pompadour;and beside her, a nymph, daughter of gods, turned to the palace with afree, startled movement, shading her eyes that she might gaze the moreintently on that tattered tricolour which floats above the palace of'Le Roi Soleil.'

* * * * *

'Oh, poor Arthur--poor Arthur! And I did it!--I did it!'

It was the cry of Eugenie's inmost life.

And before she knew, she found herself enveloped in memories thatrolled in upon her like waves of storm. How long it had been beforeshe would allow herself to see anything amiss with this marriage shehad herself made! And, indeed, it was only since Elsie's illness thatthings dimly visible before had sprung into that sharp andpiteous relief in which they stood to-day. Before it, indications,waywardnesses, the faults of a young and petted wife. But since thephysical collapse, the inner motives and passions had stood up bareand black, like the ribs of a wrecked ship from the sand. And asEugenie had been gradually forced to understand them, they had workedupon her own mind as a silent, yet ever-growing accusation, againstwhich she defended herself in vain.

Surely, surely she had done no wrong! To have allowed Arthur to go onbinding his life ever more and more closely to hers, would have been acrime. What could she give him, that such a nature most deeply needed?Home, wifely love, and children--it was to these dear enwrappingpowers she had committed him in what she had done. She had feared forherself indeed. But is it a sin to fear sin?--the declension of one'sown best will, the staining of one's purest feeling?

On her part she could proudly answer for herself. Never since Welby'smarriage, either in thought or act, had she given Arthur's wife thesmallest just cause of offence. Eugenie's was often an anxious anda troubled conscience; but not here, not in this respect. She knewherself true.

But from Elsie's point of view? Had she in truth sacrificed anignorant child to her impetuous wish for Arthur's happiness, a tooscrupulous care for her own peace? How 'sacrifice'? She had giventhe child her heart's desire. Arthur was not in love; but Elsie Blighwould have accepted him as a husband on any terms. Tenderly, in goodfaith, trusting to the girl's beauty, and Arthur's rich and lovingnature, Eugenie had joined their hands.

Was that in reality her offence? In spite of all the delicacy withwhich it had been done, had the girl's passion guessed the truth? Andhaving guessed it, had she then failed--and failed consciously--tomake the gift her own?

Eugenie had watched--often with a sinking spirit--the development ofa nature, masked by youth and happiness, but essentially narrow andpoor, full of mean ambitions and small antipathies. Arthur had playedhis part bravely, with all the chivalry and the conscience that mighthave been expected of him. And there had been moments--intervals--ofapparent happiness, when Eugenie's own conscience had been laid tosleep.

Was there anything she might have done for those two people, that shehad not done? And Elsie had seemed--she sadly remembered--to love her,to trust her--till this tragic breakdown. Indeed, so long as shecould dress, dance, dine, and chatter as much as she pleased, withher husband in constant attendance, Mrs. Welby had shown no opendiscontent with her lot; and if her caresses often hurt Eugenie morethan they pleased, there had been no outward dearth of them.

Alack!--Eugenie's heart was wrung with pity for the young maimedcreature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by themore truly tragic image of the husband. Eugenie might try to persuadeherself of the possibility of Elsie's recovery; her real instinctdenied it. Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, thoughcertain fatal accidents might end it in a week. The omens pointed toa long and fluctuating case--to years of hopeless nursing for Arthur,and complaining misery for his wife.

Years! Eugenie sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, lockingher hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur. She knew well whata shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes ofthe world; she knew how envious were the lesser men--such a man asJohn Fenwick, for instance--of a reputation and a success they thoughtoverdone and undeserved. But Arthur himself! She seemed to be lookinginto his face, graven on the dusk, the face of a man tragicallysilent, patient, eternally disappointed; of an artist conscious ofideals and discontents, loftier, more poignant, far than his fellowswill ever know--of a poet, alone at heart, forbidden to 'speak out,'blighted, and in pain.

'_Arthur--Arthur_!' She leaned her head against the pedestal of amarble vase--wrestling with herself.

Then, quick as fire, there flew through her veins the alternatepossibility--Elsie's death--freedom for herself and Arthur--the powerto retrace her own quixotic, fatal step....

Madame de Pastourelles rose to her feet, rigid and straight in herblack dress, wrestling as though with an attacking Apollyon. Sheseemed to herself a murderess in thought--the lowest and vilest ofhuman beings.

In an anguish she looked through the darkness, in a wild appeal toHeaven to save her from herself--this new self, unknown to her!--toshut down and trample on this mutiny of a sinful and selfish heart--tomake it impossible--_impossible_!--that ever again, even without herwill, against her will, a thought so hideous, so incredible, shouldenter and defile her mind.

She walked on blindly towards the water and the woods. Her eyes werefull of tears, which she could not stop. Unconsciously, to hide them,she threw round her head a black lace scarf she had brought out withher against the evening chill, and drew it close round her face.

'How late you are!' said a joyous voice beside her.

She looked up. Fenwick emerging from the wood, towards the shelterof which she was hurrying, stood before her, bareheaded, as he oftenwalked, his eyes unable to hide the pleasure with which he beheld her.

She gave a little gasp.

'You startled me!'

In the dim light he could only see her slight, fluttering smile; andit seemed to him that she was or had been in agitation. But at leastit was nothing hostile to himself; nay, it was borne in upon him as heturned his steps, and she walked beside him with a quick yet graduallysubsiding breath, that his appearance had been a relief to her, thatshe was glad of his companionship.

And he--miserable fellow!--to him it was peace after struggle, balmafter torment. For his thoughts, as he wandered through the Satorywoods alone, had been the thoughts of a hypochondriac. He hastened toleave them, now that she was near.

They wandered along the eastern edge of the 'Swiss Water,' towards thewoods amid which the railway runs. Through the gold-and-purple airthe thin autumn trees rose lightly into the evening sky, marching inordered ranks beside the water. Young men were fishing in the lake;boys and children were playing near it, and sweethearts walking inthe dank grass. The evening peace, with its note of decay and death,seemed to stir feeling rather than soothe it. It set the nervestrembling.

He began to talk of some pictures he had been studying in thePalace that day--Nattiers, Rigauds, Drouais--examples of that happy,sensuous, confident art, produced by a society that knew no doubts ofitself, which not to have enjoyed--so the survivors of it thought--wasto be for ever ignorant of what the charm of life might be.

Fenwick spoke of it with envy and astonishment. The _pleasure_ of ithad penetrated him, its gay, perpetual _festa_--as compared with thestrain of thought and conscience under which the modern lives.

'It gives me a perfect hunger for fine clothes, and jewels, andmasquerades--and "fetes de nuit"--and every sort of theatricality andexpense! Nature has sent us starvelings on the scene a hundred yearslate. We are like children in the rain, flattening our noses against aballroom window.'

'There were plenty of them then,' said Eugenie. 'But they broke in andsacked the ballroom.'

'Yes. What folly!' he said, bitterly. 'We are all still groping amongthe ruins.'

'Ridiculous!' he declared, with sparkling eyes. Art and pleasure wereonly for the few. Try and spread them, make current coin of them, andthey vanished like fairy gold.

'So only the artist may be happy?'

'The artist is never happy!' he said, roughly. 'But the few people whoappreciate him and rob him, enjoy themselves. By the way, I took oneof your ideas this morning, and made a sketch of it. I haven't noteda composition of any sort for weeks--except for this beastly play. Itcame to me while we talked.'

'Ah!' Her face, turned to him, received the news with a shrinkingpleasure.

He developed his idea before her, drawing it on the air with hisstick, or on the sand of the alleys where the arching trees overheadseemed still to hold a golden twilight captive. The picture was torepresent that fine metal-worker of the _ancien regime_ who, when theRevolution came, took his ragged children with him and went to thepalace which contained his work--work for which he had never beenpaid--and hammered it to pieces.

Fenwick talked himself at last into something like enthusiasm; andEugenie listened to him with a pitiful eagerness, only anxious to leadhim on, to put this friendship, and the pure sympathy and compassionof her feeling for him, between her and the ugly memory which hoveredround her like a demon thing. These dreams of the intellect and ofart, as they gradually rose and took shape between them, were soinfinitely welcome! Clean, blameless, strengthening--they put theghosts to flight, they gave her back herself.

'Oh, you must paint it!' she said--'you must.'

He stopped, and walked on abruptly. Then she pressed him to promiseher a time and date. It must be ready for a new gallery, and adistinguished exhibition, just about to open.

He shook his head.

'I probably shan't care about it to-morrow.'

She protested.

'Just now you were so keen!'

He hesitated--then blurted out--'Because I was talking to you! Whenyou're not there--I know very well--I shall fall back to where I wasbefore.'

She tried to laugh at him for a too dependent friend, who must alwaysbe fed on sugar-plums of praise; but the silence with which he mether, checked her. It was too full of emotion; and she ran away fromit.

She ran, however, in vain. They reached the end of the lake, and wentto look at the mouldering statue of Louis Quatorze at its furtherend--fantastic work of the great Bernini--Louis on a vast, curly-manedbeast, with flames bursting round him--flung out into the wildernessand the woods, because Louis, after adding the flames to Bernini'scomposition, finally pronounced the statue unworthy of himself andof the sacred enclosure of the Park. So here, on the outer edge ofVersailles, the crumbling failure rises, in exile to this day, withoutso much as a railing to protect it from the scribbling tourist whowrites his name all over it. In the realm of Art, it seemed, theKing's writ still ran, and the King's doom stood.

Fenwick's rhetorical sense was touched by the statue and its history.He examined it, talking fast and well, Eugenie meanwhile winning fromhim all he had to give, by the simplest words and looks--he the reed,and she the player. His mind, his fancy, worked easily once more,under the stimulus of her presence. His despondency began to give way.He believed in himself--felt himself an artist--again. The relief,physical and mental, was too tempting. He flung himself upon it withreckless desire, incapable of denying himself, or of counting thecost. And meanwhile, the effect of her black scarf, loosened, andeddying round her head and face in the soft night wind, defining theirsmall oval, and the beauty of the brow, enchanted his painter's eye.There was a moment, just as they reentered the Park, when, as shestood looking at a moon-touched vista before them, the floating scarfsuddenly recalled to him the outline of that lovely hood in whichRomney framed the radiant head of Lady Hamilton as 'The Sempstress.'

The recollection startled him. Romney! Involuntarily there flashedacross him Phoebe's use of the Romney story--her fierce commentson the deserted wife--the lovely mistress. Perhaps, while she stoodlooking at the portrait in his studio, she was thinking of LadyHamilton, and all sorts of other ludicrous and shameful things!

And _this_, all the while, was the reality--this pure, ethereal being,in whose presence he was already a better and a more hopeful man!--whoseemed to bring a fellow comfort, and moral renewal, in the mere touchof her kind hand.

The shock of inner debate still further weakened his self-control.He slipped, hardly knowing how or why, into a far more intimateconfession of himself than he had yet made to her. In the morning hehad given her the _outer_ history of his life, during the year ofher absence. But this was the inner history of a man's weaknessand failure--of his quarrels and hatreds, his baffled ambitionsand ideals. She put it together as best she could from his hurried,excited talk--from stories half told, fierce charges against'charlatans' and 'intriguers,' mingled with half-serious, half-comicreturns upon himself, attacks on all the world, alternating with aruthless self-analysis--the talk of a man who challenges societyone moment with an angry '_J'accuse!_'--and sees himself thenext--sardonically--as the chief obstacle in his own way.

Then suddenly a note of intense loneliness--anguish--inexplicabledespair. Eugenie could not stop it, could not withdraw herself.There was a strange feeling that it brought her the answer to herprayer.--They hurried on through the lower walks of the Park--plungingnow through tunnelled depths of shade, and now emerging into spaceswhere sunset and moonrise rained a mingled influence on glimmeringwater, on the dim upturned faces of Ceres or Flora, or the limbsof flower-crowned nymphs and mermaids. It seemed impossible to turnhomeward, to break off their conversation. When they reached the'Bassin de Neptune' they left the Park, turning down the TrianonAvenue, in the growing dark, till they saw to their right, behind itsiron gates, the gleaming facade of the Petit Trianon; woods all aboutthem, and to their left, again, the shimmer of wide water. Meanwhilethe dying leaves, driven by the evening wind, descended on them ina soft and ceaseless shower; the woods, so significant and human intheir planned and formal beauty, brought their 'visionary majesties'of moonlight and of gloom to bear on nerve and sense, turned all thatwas said and all that was felt, beneath their spell, to poetry.

Suddenly, at the Trianon gate, Eugenie stopped.

'I'm very tired,' she said, faintly. 'I am afraid we must go back.'

Fenwick denounced himself for a selfish brute; and they turnedhomeward. But it was not physical fatigue she felt. It was rather theburden of a soul thrown headlong upon hers--the sudden appeal of atask which seemed to be given her by God--for the bridling of her ownheart, and the comforting and restoring of John Fenwick. From allthe conflicting emotion of an evening which changed her life, whatremained--or seemed to remain--was a missionary call of duty andaffection. 'Save him!--and master thyself!'

So, yet again, poor Eugenie slipped into the snare which Fate had setfor one who was only too much a woman.

The Rue des Reservoirs was very empty as Fenwick and Madame dePastourelles mounted the paved slope leading towards the hotel. Thestreet-lamps were neither many nor bright--but from the glazed galleryof the restaurant, a broad, cheerful illumination streamed upon thepassers-by. They stepped within its bounds. And at the moment, awoman who had just crossed to the opposite side of the street stoppedabruptly to look at them. They paused a few minutes in the entrance,still chatting; the woman opposite made a movement as though tore-cross the street, then shook her head, laughed, and walked away.Fenwick went into the restaurant and Eugenie hurried through thecourtyard to the door of the Findon's apartment.

But in her reflexions of the night, Eugenie came to the conclusionthat the situation, as it then stood at Versailles, was not one to beprolonged.

Next day she proposed to her father and sister a change of plan.On the whole, she said, she was anxious to get back to London; theholiday was overspreading its due limits; and she urged pressing onand home. Lord Findon was puzzled, but submissive; the bookish sisterTheresa, now a woman of thirty, welcomed anything that would bring herback to the London Library and the British Museum. But suddenly, justas the maids had been warned, and Lord Findon's man had been sent tolook out trains, his master caught a chill, going obstinately, and ina mocking spirit, to see what 'Faust' might be like, as given atthe Municipal Theatre of Versailles. There was fever, and a touch ofbronchitis; nothing serious; but the doctor who had been summonedfrom Paris would not hear of travelling. Lord Findon hoarsely preached'chewing' to him, through the greater part of his visits; he revengedhimself by keeping a tight hold on his patient, in all that was nothis tongue. Eugenie yielded, with what appeared to Theresa a strangeamount of reluctance; and they settled down for a week or two.

In the middle of the convalescence, the elder son, Marmaduke, cameover to see his father. He was a talkative Evangelical, like hismother; a partner in the brewery owned by his mother's kindred; andrecently married to a Lady Louisa.

After spending three days at the hotel, he suddenly said to LordFindon, as he was mounting guard one night, while Eugenie wrote someletters:

'I say, pater, do you want Eugenie to marry that fellow Fenwick?'

Lord Findon turned uneasily in his bed.

'What makes you say that?'

'Well, he's dreadfully gone on her--never happy except when she'sthere--and she--well, she encourages him a good bit, father.'

Marmaduke, however, did try; with the only result that Eugenie soongrew a little vexed and tremulous, and begged him to go home. Hemight be a master of brewing finance, and a dear, kind, well-meaningbrother, but he really did not understand his sister's affairs.

Marmaduke went home, much puzzled, urgently commanding Theresa towrite to him, and announcing to Arthur Welby, who listened silently,as he talked, that if Fenwick did propose, he should think it a damnedimpertinence.

Lord Findon meanwhile held his peace. Every day Eugenie came in fromher walk with Fenwick, to sit with or read to her father. Shealways spoke of what she had been doing, quite naturally and simply,describing their walk and their conversation, giving the news ofFenwick's work--bringing his sketches to show. Lord Findon would lieand listen--a little suspicious and ill at ease--sometimes a littlesulky. But he let his illness and his voicelessness excuse him fromgrappling with her. She must, of course, please herself. If she chose,as she seemed about to choose--why, they must all make the best ofit!--Marmaduke might talk as he liked. Naturally, Arthur kept awayfrom them. Poor Arthur! But what a darling she looked in her black,with this fresh touch of colour in her pale cheeks!

The Welbys certainly had but little to do with the party at theReservoirs. Welby seemed to be absorbed in his new picture, and Mrs.Welby let it be plainly understood that at home Arthur was too busy,and she too ill, to receive visitors; while out-of-doors they neitherof them wished to be thrown across Mr. Fenwick.

Every evening, after taking his wife home, Welby went out by himselffor a solitary walk. He avoided the Park and the woods; chose ratherthe St. Cyr road, or the Avenue de Paris. He walked, wrapt, a littletoo picturesquely perhaps, in an old Campagna cloak, relic of hisyears in Rome--with a fine collie for his companion. Once or twice inthe distance he caught sight of Eugenie and Fenwick--only to turn downa side street, out of their way.

His thoughts meanwhile, day by day, his silent, thronging thoughts,dealt with his own life--and theirs. Would she venture it? Hediscussed it calmly with himself. It presented itself to him as anact altogether unworthy of her. What hurt him most, however, at thesetimes, was the occasional sudden memory of Eugenie's face, tremblingwith pain, under some slight or unkindness shown her by his wife.

One day Welby was sitting beside his wife on the sheltered side ofthe Terrace, when Eugenie and Fenwick came in sight, emerging from theHundred Steps. Suddenly Welby bent over his wife.

'Elsie!--have _you_ noticed anything?'

'Noticed what?'

He motioned towards the distant figures. His gesture was a little dryand hostile.

Elsie in amazement raised herself painfully on her elbow to look.

'Eugenie!' she said, breathlessly--'Eugenie--and Mr. Fenwick!'

Arthur Welby watched the transformation in her face. It was the firsttime he had seen her look happy for months.

'What an _excellent_ thing!' she cried; all flushed and vehement.'Arthur, you know you said how lonely she must be!'

'Is he worthy of her?' he said, slowly, finding his words withdifficulty.

'Well, of course, _we_ don't like him!--but then Uncle Findon does.And if he didn't, it's Eugenie that matters--isn't it?--only Eugenie!At her age, you can't be choosing her husband for her! Well, I never,never thought--Eugenie's so close!--she'd make up her mind to marryanybody!'

And she rattled on, in so much excitement that Welby hastily andurgently impressed discretion upon her.

But when she and Eugenie next met, Eugenie was astonished by hergaiety and good temper--her air of smiling mystery. Madame dePastourelles hoped it meant real physical improvement, and would haveliked to talk of it to Arthur; but all talk between them grew rarerand more difficult. Thus Eugenie's walks with Fenwick throughthe enchanted lands that surround Versailles became daily moresignificant, more watched. Lord Findon groaned in his sick-room, butstill restrained himself.

It was a day--or rather a night--of late October--a wet and windynight, when the autumn leaves were coming down in swirling hosts onthe lawns and paths of Trianon.

Fenwick was hard at work, in the small apartment which he occupiedon the third floor of the Hotel des Reservoirs. It consisted of asitting-room and two bedrooms looking on an inner _cour_. One ofthe bedrooms he had turned into a sort of studio. It was now full ofdrawings and designs for the sumptuous London 'production' on whichhe was engaged--rooms at Versailles and Trianon--views in the Trianongardens--fragments of decoration--designs for stage grouping--for thereproduction of one of the famous _fetes de nuit_ in the gardens ofthe 'Hameau'--studies of costume even.

His proud ambition hated the work; he thought it unworthy of him;only his poverty had consented. But he kept it out of sight of hiscompanions as much as he could, and worked as much as possible atnight.

And here and there, amongst the rest, were the sketches and fragments,often the grandiose fragments, which represented his 'buriedlife'--the life which only Eugenie de Pastourelles seemed now to havethe power to evoke. When some hours of other work had weakened theimpulse received from her, he would look at these things sadly, andput them aside.

To-night, as he drew, he was thinking incessantly of Eugenie; piercedoften by intolerable remorse. But whose fault was it? Will you ask aman, perishing of need, to put its satisfaction from him? The tests oflife are too hard. The plain, selfish man must always fail under them.Why act and speak as though he were responsible for what Nature andthe flesh impose?

But how was it all to end?--that was what tormented him. Hisconscience shrank from the half-perceived villainies before him; buthis will failed him. What was the use of talking? He was the slaveof an impulse, which was not passion, which had none of the excuse ofpassion, but represented rather the blind search of a man who, like achild in the dark, recoils in reckless terror from loneliness and thephantoms of his own mind.

Eleven o'clock struck. He was busying himself with a cardboard model,on which he had been trying the effect of certain arrangements, whenhe heard a knock at his door.

'_Entrez_!' he said, in astonishment.

At this season of the year the hotel kept early hours, and there wasnot a light to be seen in the _cour_.

'I have something important to say to you.' Welby took no notice ofthe hand. 'Shall we be undisturbed?'

'I imagine so!' said Fenwick, fiercely retreating; 'but, as you see, Iam extremely busy!' He pointed to the room and its contents.

'I am sorry to interrupt you'--Welby's voice was carefullycontrolled--'but I think you will admit that I had good reason to comeand find you.' He looked round to see that the door was shut, thenadvanced a step nearer. 'You are, I think, acquainted with that lady?'

He handed Fenwick a card. Fenwick took it to the light. On it waslithographed 'Miss Isabel Morrison,' and a written address, 'Corso deMadrid, Buenos Ayres,' had been lightly scratched out in one corner.

Fenwick put down the card.

'Well,' he said, sharply--'and if I am--what then?'

Welby began to speak--paused--and cleared his throat. He was standing,with one hand lightly resting on the table, his eyes fixed on Fenwick.There was a moment of shock, of mutual defiance.

'This lady seems to have observed the movements of our party here,'said Welby, commanding himself. 'She followed my wife and me to-day,after we met you in the Park. She spoke to us. She gave us theastonishing news that you were a married man--that your wife--'

Fenwick rushed forward and gripped the speaker's arm.

'My God! Tell me!--is she alive?'

His eyes starting out of his head--his crimson face--his anguish,seemed to affect the other with indescribable repulsion.

Welby wrenched himself free.

'That was what Miss Morrison wished to ask _you_. She says that whenyou and she last met you were not on very good terms; she shrank,therefore, from addressing you. But she had a respect for yourwife--she wished to know what had become of her--and her curiosityimpelled her to speak to us. She seems to have been in Buenos Ayresfor many years. This year she returned--as governess--with the familyof a French engineer, who have taken an apartment in Versailles. Shefirst saw you in the street nearly a month ago.'

Fenwick had dropped into a chair, his face in his hands. As Welbyceased speaking, he looked up.

'And she said nothing about my wife's where-abouts?'

'Nothing. She knows nothing.'

'Nor of why she left me?'

Welby hesitated.

'Miss Morrison seems to have her own ideas as to that.'

'Where is she?' Fenwick rose hurriedly.

'Rue des Ecuries, 27. Naturally, you can't see her to-night.'

'No'--said Fenwick, sitting down again, like a man in a dream--'no.Did she say anything else?'

'She mentioned something about a debt you owed her,' said Welby,coldly--'some matter that she had only just discovered. I had noconcern with that.'

Fenwick's face, which had become deathly pale, was suddenly overspreadwith a rush of crimson. More almost than by the revelation of his longdeception as to his wife was he humiliated and tortured by these wordsrelating to his debt to Morrison on Welby's lips. This successfulrival, this fine gentleman!--admitted to his sordid affairs. He roseuncertainly, pulling himself passionately together.

'Now that she has reappeared, I shall pay my debt to Miss Morrison--ifit exists,' he said, haughtily; 'she need be in no fear as to that.Well, now then'--he leaned heavily on the mantelpiece, his face stilltwitching--'you know, Mr. Welby--by this accident--the secret of mylife. My wife left me--for the maddest, emptiest reasons--and she tookour child with her. I did everything I could to discover them. It wasall in vain--and if Miss Morrison cannot enlighten me, I am as muchin the dark to-night as I was yesterday, whether my wife is alive--ordead. Is there anything more to be said?'

'By God, yes!' cried Welby, with a sudden gesture of passion,approaching Fenwick. 'There is everything to be said!'

Fenwick was silent. Their eyes met.

'When you first made acquaintance with Lord Findon,' said Welby,controlling himself, 'you made him--you made all of us--believe thatyou were an unmarried man?'

'I did. It was the mistake--the awkwardness of a moment. I hadn't youreasy manners! I was a raw country fellow--and I hadn't the courage,the mere self-possession, to repair it.'

'You let Madame de Pastourelles sit to you,' said Welby,steadily--'week after week, month after month--you accepted herkindness--you became her friend. Later on, you allowed her to adviseyou--write to you--talk to you about marrying, when your means shouldbe sufficient--without ever allowing her to guess for a moment thatyou had already a wife and child!'

'That is true,' said Fenwick, nodding. 'The second false step was theconsequence of the first.'

'The consequence! You had but to say a word--one honest word! Then,when your conduct, I suppose--I don't dare to judge you--had drivenyour wife away--for twelve years'--he dragged the words between histeeth--'you masquerade to Madame de Pastourelles--and when her longmartyrdom as a wife is at last over--when in the tendernessand compassion of her heart she begins to show you a friendshipwhich--which those who know her'--he laboured for breath andwords--'can only--presently--interpret in one way--you who owe hereverything--everything!--you _dare_ to play with her innocent, herstainless life--you _dare_ to let her approach--to let those abouther approach--the thought of her marrying you--while all the time youknew--what you know! If there ever was a piece of black cruelty inthis world, it is you, _you_ that have been guilty of it!'

The form of Arthur Welby, drawn to its utmost height, towered abovethe man he accused. Fenwick sat, struck dumb. Welby's increasingstoop, which of late had marred his natural dignity of gait; theslight touches of affectation, of the _petit-maitre_, which were nowoften perceptible; the occasional note of littleness, or malice, suchas his youth had never known:--all these defects, physical and moral,had been burnt out of the man, as he spoke these words, by the flameof his only, his inextinguishable passion. For his dear mistress--inthe purest, loftiest sense of that word--he stood champion, denouncingwith all his soul the liar who had deceived and endangered her; astern, unconscious majesty expressed itself in his bearing, his voice;and the man before him--artist and poet like himself--was sensible ofit in the highest, the most torturing degree.

Fenwick turned away. He stooped mechanically to the fire, put ittogether, lifted a log lying in front of it, laid it carefully on theothers. Then he looked at Welby, who on his side had walked to thewindow and opened it, as though the room suffocated him.